February 1, 2008
 
    Last night I went to a "ladies only" Henna Party at the neighbors "villa". It was a blast…I got to meet 5 or 6 women from the compound that I had not met before and sit around drinking wine, talking about life in Doha with other women. Unfortunately I was having so much fun I wasn't keeping an eye on the time. One minute I looked at my watch and it was 11:00, the next thing I knew it was 3:30 AM!  I am way too old for staying up that late (and drinking that much wine)!
    We were supposed to go to the desert with a whole group today…RD left at 9:00 AM…I was still in a coma.
 
February 2, 2008
 
    This morning Eve picked me up and took me to her hairdresser for my first haircut in Doha. I'm aiming for a "Posh Spice" kind of "do" so I'm guessing it will take me about 6-8 months to get there. RD met us for a quick lunch and then he and I went to pick up Dawn, a woman from Montana, who is working here in Qatar for a month. We took her to the "Green Door" (figured she was tired of malls and hotel restaurants). Of course we ended up buying a cabinet for one of the bathrooms, a bookcase, and a wine rack…I can't seem to get out of there without buying something! Dawn even found some hand-carved horses from India to take home as souvenirs… I'm such a bad influence…
    Afterwards we brought her back to our "villa" for wine and dinner from our favorite little neighborhood Lebanese restaurant…I hope it was a nice break for her, we sure had fun talking about Montana and horses.
 
February 4, 2008
             
    Well, it finally happened…I had a boo-hoo melt-down last night. I set the alarm for 2:30 AM so I could get up and watch the Super Bowl…what did I find? Three sport channels of re-run soccer matches and a re-run rugby game. So I sat at the computer for two hours hitting refresh every 1-2 minutes so I could at least follow the score of the game. Today I have checked intermittently to see if they are going to play it at all…I've seen darts, soccer, sailing, snooker, soccer, basketball, ultimate fighting, snowboarding, rugby, soccer, bowling and golf…darts for God's sake, but no Super Bowl! Oh, and did I say soccer?
 
February 6, 2008
 
    Yesterday was officially my first "I hate Doha" day. It's been building for days but it finally hit yesterday. It started with the internet problems caused by the cut cables in the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf (it has not escaped notice that the primary country that is completely cut off from the world is Iran), followed by no Super Bowl, then yesterday RD drove to work and left me stranded at home (never a good plan). As I was going about my day trying to plan a dinner party I could not find a single recipe that I knew I could find all the ingredients here in Doha…imagine trying to do a dinner party where you can't fix any of your tried and true, the beef sucks, everyone is tired of lamb, pork has to be smuggled into the country, one person refuses to eat chicken (childhood trauma of some sort), another is allergic to shellfish, and you don't know how to use half of the foods you are able to find. Thank God RD is such an inventive, adventurous cook.
    Then the internet guys show up. They needed RD's RP #, which of course I didn't have written down anywhere, so I picked up the phone to call him and the call wouldn't go through. Come to find out you cannot call a cell phone (or "mobile" as they call them over here) from a landline…what's up with that!?! When RD got home he hooked up the "wireless" gadget (I have no idea how any of this works) and of course it's telling us we have an excellent signal but unfortunately we can't get online! How do you spell Arghhh?
 
February 10, 2008
 
    I finally got my RP (my resident permit). I am "officially" a resident of Qatar. Our internet is still not working properly…RD said one of the IT guys from the hospital offered to come over one night this week and see if he could get us up and running.
    It's finally happened, I've hit the point where the driving antics of the people over here are no longer shocking and amusing (people making U-turns from the far RIGHT lane, people driving up and over medians, people driving up over the curb and passing 10 cars on the right only to squeeze back in and still have to wait at a round-about, people coming up behind you at 140 kph flashing their high beams and riding your bumper until you move over, people honking their horns at you if your foot is not on the gas pedal the second the light turns green)…they are starting to piss me off…not good. I drive with the radio turned off and my hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel. It is defensive driving, being totally aware of what is going on around you, in all directions, at all times. It is getting tiresome.
    Speaking of needing a vacation…we leave for Vietnam on March 7th and return on March 15th. RD turned 21 over there and now 35 years later he will turn 56!
 
February 13, 2008
 
    The walls got painted today and it looks fabulous. I only did a few accent walls in a caramel color but it really added a nice dimension to the room. I had a canvas built so I could paint an abstract for above the couch. At 3' x 5' it's a bit intimidating so currently it is just leaning against the wall in the living room. I will make it my goal for next week to get the painting done.

February 16, 2008

    Last night we went to a Bar-B-Q at the desert home of a Qatari who is in “upper management” at the hospital. We all met at a “Petrol” station on the edge of town (just past where the map ends) and drove 50+ km north to an area just past a town called Al Khor on the east coast of Qatar. There were about 15 SUV’s caravanning together…thank God…we would have never found the place alone. As described in a previous entry, a Middle Eastern Bar-B-Q is way over the top. There were 4 grills and a fire pit going, 4 different kinds of chicken, 3 kinds of lamb, 2 huge (22 kg) fish wrapped in foil roasting in the embers of the fire pit, four salads, three desserts, tea, sodas and water. The compound itself was similar to most around here…high concrete walls all the way around with a huge entry gate. Once inside there were several buildings around the edges and in the center there was a large area covered with rugs and surrounded by chairs (they don’t do tables, everyone sits in a huge square and just puts their plate on their lap). Unfortunately the weather was not co-operating. It had been beautiful blue skies all day but as we were driving out there the wind picked up and brought a sand storm with it bringing the visibility to less than 100 feet. We tried to caravan to get out of there but in the dark, in the sand storm we all just drifted apart…it was an adventure getting home…
    For me it was eventful because it was the first time a Qatari man has actually spoken to me (usually they just act as if I am invisible). He was very gracious and actually carried on a conversation with me, however, I am also quite sure that if RD had not been standing right next to me he would not have spoken to me at all, purely out of respect for RD.

February 21, 2008

    Tonight we had dinner at the “villa” of a Lebanese dentist and his wife. She cooked the most amazing Lebanese meal from scratch. As with all Lebanese meals there was a mountain of food…she had to have been cooking for at least 2 days. It was by far the best hummous I have had since I have been here…several of us nearly have her convinced to give us cooking lessons.

February 22, 2008

    Happy Birthday to me! Oh my Gawd, I can’t believe I’m 49! This afternoon I went down to the spa at the Four Seasons and had a “Revitalizing” Salt Scrub (I figured a head-to-toe exfoliation, to get rid of OLD dead skin cells, was an appropriate way to celebrate) and my eyebrows threaded…What is threading you ask? It is a technique out of India for removing hair… they take a long loop of thread and twist it. Then, holding one end in their teeth they roll a length of it along your skin and it rips the hair out! It kind of feels like waxing but slow. It does prolong the discomfort a bit but it really isn’t that bad and they say it is better for your skin.
    After my “revitalizing” time at the spa we had dinner with a whole group of people from the hospital at Jessie’s “villa”. She had a beautiful beaded key chain for me and Claude, a physician from Canada, brought me a little leather horse (one of those amazing men who pay attention to you and your interests) and a birthday cake with those horrid little candles that won’t blow out. Luckily they only put seven on the cake or I would have passed out just before the house caught on fire. Of course as they brought the cake out you could hear a fire engine outside…everyone busted out laughing as it was so appropriately timed.

February 23, 2008

    This morning I went down to the Four Seasons again and picked up Deborah, a new Family Practice doc (she has been here for 10 days) who is a hospitalist with RD. Of course I had to take her down to the Green Door, which she loved but didn’t buy anything because she has no where to live yet. There was some kind of a mix up on housing so they do not have a villa for her to move into. They are putting her up at the Four Seasons. She was whining about it but as we were sitting in the Jacuzzi in the spa (after sitting on the beach with a beach “boy” waiting on us hand and foot and a delicious lunch by the pool) I pointed out that it can’t be THAT BAD living there for God’s sake! And to stop whining! 
    I drove her back to our compound for a Pizza Party at Jims. I had never been into Jim’s villa but it was the ultimate bachelor pad…pool table in the living room and 20+ beer mugs chilling in the freezer! The pizza over here is not like pizza in the states. Of course no sausage or pepperoni, they do a meat but I have no idea what it is, the sauce does not have much seasoning, the cheese gets hard as the pizza gets cold and the vegetarian pizza has corn on it! The company, however, was wonderful.
    I also found out that I have been driving illegally! I was under the false impression that since I have an International driver’s license that is good for a year I could get my Qatari license at my leisure…wrong…the International license is only good for the first two weeks you are in the country! I have been driving illegally since mid December! If I had been in an accident I am told it would definitely not be good…i.e. I probably would have been deported!

February 24, 2008

    RD called…I am scheduled to get my temporary Driver’s license tomorrow morning. Whew, dodged that bullet!
    I spent the morning being “Swedish”! The Swedish Women’s Group was doing a tour of Aspire and when I heard about it I asked Katrina and Merica (two Swedish women whose husbands are anesthesiologists at the hospital) if I could tag along. I have never been surrounded by so many blonde women in my life! They joked that if I only said “Ya, Ya” and “Okey Dokey” no one would ever know I wasn’t Swedish!
    Aspire is a school (next door to the sports medicine hospital that RD works in) that is combining academics and sports training in an attempt to raise a generation of athletes able to compete on an international level. There is a rigorous application process and they currently only have 200 male students with a plan of having a total of 1000 both male and female. We only toured the sports complex…it is sixty acres under one roof! There were 5 basketball/handball/squash courts (each with seating for 1200), one area equally as big with gymnastic equipment, another area that was blocked off so that female athletes could practice without anyone able to see them, a full track area (seating for 3600) with all the pole vaulting and discus and long jump areas included, a full size soccer field with seating on both sides (I’d guess for at least 5000), an Olympic size pool and a diving pool 6 meters deep with platforms up to 10 meters high. It really was quite amazing.
    After the tour I went out to lunch with about 5 of the women and very graciously they spoke English most of the time. The best part however was that one of them is a hairdresser (very used to cutting blonde hair) and she is going to fix my botched haircut on Tuesday!

February 25, 2008

    Another Doha experience under my belt…I got my driver’s license this morning. Aside from the guy peeing outside the entrance to the compound, the three guys shoveling chunks of the concrete floor in the room to the left as we walked in, or the bathroom with no door…it looked just like any other motor vehicle department in the States. Yikes!
    I also accomplished another goal I have been “fermenting”…I got a private French teacher! I should be starting next week. I decided that learning Arabic (my initial plan) would not be as useful as French and probably a lot more difficult. I remember a little bit of my French from high school (a million years ago…ok, only 30) so feel like I have a tiny head start (emphasis on tiny).

February 26, 2008

    Got my haircut today and she did a fabulous job, especially considering how botched it was. She kept saying “who did this to you?” I feel very relieved that I have someone I can trust.
    This evening we went to see Placido Domingo performing at The Pearl. The Pearl is Qatar’s equivalent of the palm tree island in Dubai, unfortunately it isn’t complete so they set up a massive temporary building to do the concert in. It had amazingly good acoustics considering it was temporary but unfortunately if you were seated near the back rows, as we were, you could hear everything going on behind you down on the ground…including the septic truck backing up to the main entrance (beep, beep, beep) and then turning on a pump to pump out the port-a-potties they had set up outside! Luckily they realized right away that is was a mistake and turned the pump off after about two seconds but it was obvious that they hadn’t really thought that one through. The concert was amazing and the crowd was very appreciative…he ended up doing four encores!

February 29, 2008

    Nothing special happened today…laid in the sun out by the pool, made tacos for dinner (finally found cheddar cheese, tortillas and salsa all at the same time…no minor feat in this town) and had Margaritas as the kicker, but I just had to write something since it’s the 29th!